Film industry waits on budget

After something of a box-office comeback in 2010, the Australian film industry is pinning its new-year hopes on a series of coming releases and what it hopes will be welcome news in the federal budget in May.

The industry’s campaign for a ­doubling of the federal government’s location tax rebate for foreign films has drawn support from the likes of Rabbit-Proof Fence director
Phillip Noyce
, actor
Hugh Jackman
, Wolf Creek director
Greg McLean
and about 9000 other signatories.

Those leading the campaign argue that the doubling is needed to make Australia competitive with northern-hemisphere territories offering 30 per cent plus, even setting aside the issue of the Australian dollar, the major contributor to a historic dearth of ­foreign production locally.

Some industry sources are encouraged that the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, which has been reviewing the screen sector, has privately expressed support for doubling the offset.

But Arts Minister
Simon Crean
’s office said late last year that it had yet to receive the department’s review, which was now expected this month. Any recommendation would then have to survive the Expenditure Review Committee process, in what is expected to be a tight budget.

After some wilderness years, Australian films’ share of the box office recovered last year on the strength of films such as Bran Nue Dae and ­Animal Kingdom.

Screen Australia hopes that a slate of new films will continue that trend, from Red Dog, Ned Kelly producer Nelson Woss’s adaptation of a Louis De Bernières novel; Jonathan Teplitzky’s Burning Man, being touted as another potential international breakout, and Fred Schepisi’s adaptation of Patrick White’s The Eye of the Storm.

Baz Luhrmann
and his wife, Catherine Martin, confirmed before Christmas that they had recently hosted Sony Pictures executives from the US in Sydney with a view to shooting at least part of their planned $100 million adaptation of The Great Gatsby at Sydney’s Fox Studio.

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The production would use the increasingly popular 40 per cent producer offset for Australian films. The offset is also being used by two big-budget
George Miller
sequels, Happy Feet 2, recently in production in Sydney, and Mad Max 4: Fury Road, which has been postponed until later this year.

The body traditionally responsible for luring foreign productions here, Ausfilm, has refocused its efforts on brokering deals between American studios and US-based Australian film makers to take advantage of the producer offset.

But for the first time in decades, no foreign productions are shooting in Australia, and it remains to be seen whether even those larger-budget productions will be enough to counteract an expected slump in overall local ­production figures for 2010-2011.

Like many other veterans, Australian cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, who won an Oscar in 2002 for Lord of The Rings, isn’t holding his breath. “The New Zealand government has been very proactive about making the country attractive to film in. Their dollar helps, but I just don’t think the same attention to detail has been seen here," he said.

“When films like The Matrix and Mission Impossible II were pouring into Australia they were getting 50¢ to the dollar. It was a deal that encouraged studios to see Australia as a production base and once they started coming on a semi-regular basis we started building up the technical expertise and sophistication to accommodate them, which has obviously benefited the local industry.

“The truth is there is now a whole level of people who have moved ­offshore," Mr Lesnie said in December, just before leaving to shoot
Peter Jackson
’s latest film, The Hobbit, in New Zealand.

“Screen Australia may be saying we have had a great year, but there are a lot of owner-operators – technicians, gaffers, grips – who are having to sell their trucks because there’s not enough work to cover their costs."

“I have always tried to maintain being able to contribute to local films," said Mr Lesnie, who was responsible for cinematography on Bran Nue Dae.

“It’s a different pay scale, but a lot of people in the industry are passionate about it."